‘Gotham’ Red Band Trailer Really Loves That Joker

The season two premiere of Gotham aired on Monday, ushering in a season that will focus on the cartoonish villains who will soon take over the city. Now Fox has released a bloody red band trailer for next Monday night’s episode, “Rise of the Villains: Knock, Knock.”

They are really trying to hammer the idea that matricidal circus kid Jerome Valeska (Cameron Monaghan) is going to become the Joker, which means he’ll probably get axed in the fourth episode. Showrunner Bruno Heller addressed the Joker rumors last summer and said they will be teasing Joker’s identity, but “hopefully fool them in the end.”

I’m partial to the fan theory that Jerome instead will end up as a gender-flipped Harley Quinn, and it’s Jim Gordon’s (Ben McKenzie) ex-fiancee Barbara Kean (Erin Richards) who will actually end up as a similarly gender-flipped Joker.

So, after building up Jerome as the sociopathic, clownish, bus-full-of-cheerleader-murdering, purple-suit-wearing proto-joker, they may have the most cardboard character from season one transform into the clown princess of crime and slap around her young ginger boyfriend? What a positively diabolical boner!